Cloud Atlas is a multi-layered novel that relates the interlocking stories of six different characters from several different time periods, both past and future. Each character discovers a past artifact related to another character, and even while they are caught up in dramas of their own-sickness, conspiracy, the struggle to create, a post-apocalyptic rebellion-they attempt to learn more about these figures from the past. The novel explores the ideas of reincarnation and the interconnectedness of all things.
Mitchell has said of the book:
Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark...that's just a symbol really of the universality of human nature. The title itself "Cloud Atlas," the cloud refers to the ever changing manifestations of the Atlas, which is the fixed human nature which is always thus and ever shall be. So the book's theme is predacity, the way individuals prey on individuals, groups on groups, nations on nations, tribes on tribes. So I just take this theme and in a sense reincarnate that theme in another context...
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